25 People On The Weirdest Family They Knew As A Child

1. Sleeping With The Dogs

When I was very young, a friend once mentioned she slept with the family dogs. Big deal, right? Our dog slept in my room, too. Then I went over to her house for a sleepover. We slept in the living room that night, but when she went to change into her nightie, I found out she slept in the basement, on a sleeping bag between two of the four kennels housing the family’s 10 dogs. All of her possessions were in cardboard boxes. There were three bedrooms in that house–one for her parents, one for her sibling who had moved out a few years ago, and one stacked floor to ceiling with the products for her mom’s various pyramid schemes.

No one seemed to think this was at all odd. My friend matter-of-factly said it was her choice to move into the basement so she had ‘space’. She didn’t tell me to keep it secret or say anything that made me think it was wrong, so although I felt weird about it, I just kind of dropped it. We faded in and out of contact all through school, and the last I heard, she moved in with her boyfriend when she was sixteen, but remained on good terms with her parents. So I guess the weirdest/creepiest part of this story is that no one involved seemed to think anything was wrong with the situation.

purplhouse

2. Living Alone

Sophomore year of highschool, I was invited to one kids apartment to work on a school project. His house had no furniture – just a single mattress, and was a complete mess. Giant stack of dirty dishes, etc.

While I was there, the guy nonchalantly mentioned his only parent, his mother, had left to visit family in Korea 2 years earlier and he’d lived by himself since then. She just sent him money each month for food, and paid the bills remotely.

Considering he must have been ~15 years old, I was kind of thinking wtf. But it seemed like he was doing fine so I just moved on.

XxyxXII

3. Raising Himself

I know a guy who lived alone since he was 15. His parents divorced, his dad went to another country and started a company, and his mother married again and went to live to the new husband’s house. He stayed in the old house and they both gave him money, they were really rich.

He turned out really responsible, he finished school and college and now is currently the CEO of his father’s company.

Dekkai001

4. Big, Silent Family

I went home with a friend one day after school and she explained that her dad liked it quiet in the house. Okay.

So we get there and the house is SILENT. I have to explain, she had NINE brothers and sisters. And in this tiny, three bedroom house, with TEN KIDS, it was completely quiet. Their dad is in the recliner, one of only two chairs in the house, and he’s just chilling, smoking a cigarette.

We were in there to get a game and play it outside. Two of her brothers started jostling each other and bumped into a cabinet. Their dad looked at them and held up his cigarette and they RAN out of the house. We followed right after them.

Shannon always wore long sleeves. That didn’t really raise a lot of flags – there were plenty of Mennonite families around. But one day her sleeve slipped up and I saw a lot of small, round scars on her arm. It was a long time before I realized they were scars from cigarette burns. And that she had hundreds of them.

hahahahthunk

5. Ready to Run

One of my good friends in elementary school– first through fifth grade– had a deadbolt on the inside of her bedroom door. She also had a phone in her closet that she wasn’t allowed to use. It was a second line and had a different phone number than the main house phone. The Bible on her book shelf was full of money, $20s and $50s tucked between the pages. I didn’t realize what this all meant until I was much, much older. Her father was very abusive towards her mother. Not the kids, though. Just the mom. My friend’s room was the “safe” room. Mom would lock herself and the kids in there when he got in one of his moods. The phone was to call for help. The money was in case they needed to run.

_procrastinatrix_

6. Flee the Fleas

An unrepentant infestation of fleas. Not a ‘flea problem.’ A full-blown infestation meaning that people should not reside in the house until the issue was resolved.

I only stayed a few minutes.

Avocado90266

7. Shower Together: Save Water

I was staying over at a friends house during the summer, we were like 11 or 12 and he told me he was going to shower, I told him cool I’d stay and play playstation no biggie. A little while later I hear multiple people laughing coming from the bathroom down the hall, later on both his parents and him come out all in towels.

I was confused but asked him afterwards what the laughing was about and he said his dad accidentally peed on his leg in the shower, so this dude just took a shower with his whole family and his dad peed on him.

It was definitely a wtf moment, also they weren’t poor or anything to warrant sharing showers, they lived in an absolutely massive home that had like 6 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, an inground pool, the works.

sedition-

8. Bad Nighttime Vibes

Spent the night at a friend from school’s house. Back then went back and forth between being a light sleeper and a sound sleeper. Woke up when the door opened and just waited to see what was going to happen. His father closed the door and I went back to sleep.

Years later found out his dad was molesting him. At that moment I got serious creepy vibes.

Nevek_Green

9. Snack Time

They ate flour as a snack. Like actual, white flour. NO ONE in that house thought this wasn’t normal.

AmbienNicoleSmith

10. Open Door Rule

The lady next door used to babysit us while my mother worked. She had children the same age as us (9 and 10 years old) and an older son that was 14 years old. She had a rule in her house that we cannot close the door even if you are using the restroom or changing your clothes.

I just hated when I had to use the bathroom. I tried my best to hold it until I got home. When I could not hold it anymore, her creepy ass son when following me to the restroom and just watch me pee. I would tell the mother how uncomfortable I was and she said that the rules are rules and must leave the door open. I told my mother and that was the end of her babysitting us.

Lanna33

11. Jar Storage

They kept everything in a jar. Everything. Cereal? In a jar. Money/credit cards? Pocket-Jar. Dirty laundry? Large jar. They even kept some of their smaller jars in jars.

drink_tea_with_me

12. The Nail Room

The nail room.

Small cupboard under the stairs that had nails stuck to every surface. Like, the pointed end pointing into the room. Even the inside of the door was the same.

It reminded me of an iron maiden torture device but not as tight fitting.

Family were completely normal. My friend is completely normal. No weirdness or anything. He doesn’t know why they had the nail room either. Just always remembers it being there.

CG1991

13. Criminal Family

Had a family two doors down from mine: father and three sons. All the sons were well-known troublemakers throughout the town. In the late 90s, the youngest was arrested for sodomizing his “Baby” stepbrother from his biological mom. Then in the early 2000s, the remainder of the family went on to use the house to manufacture drugs. The police came and arrested the father and the two oldest sons. The father bailed himself out and left his sons in prison. He liquidated almost everything he had, as well as the two sons, and disappeared. From what I understand, the two oldest sons are still in prison and the youngest is in some institute for sexual criminals.

JQuest7575

14. No Hallway Lights Allowed

One of my best friends growing up had really weird house rules.

No one was allowed to go into the garage, which we later found out was because her parents smoked weed in there. But the weirdest things were that both her and her brother were locked in their rooms at bedtime (deadbolt on the outside of the door) and they weren’t allowed to turn on hallway lights at night. Light on in the living room while you’re watching TV? Sure. Light on in the kitchen or bedroom? Of course. But they couldn’t turn on any other lights when moving from room to room or going upstairs.

I know there were other things, but those two still stick out the most to me. What the hell was going on at night?

somerrae

15. The Family Unit

His mom and dad lived together…and his dads mistress and his half brother lived in the basement.

Spidey5292

16. Dad and His Four Wives

My sister’s best friend is African and her dad had 4 wives. He bought 3 over from Africa and he met one in America. The wives and daughters all worked in a braiding shop together while dad and the boys ran a tire shop. They were very rich. My sister and her friend went on a road trip to Texas with some money the friend stole that she was supposed to deposit. I think it was about 15k. Nobody got in trouble when they came back. I don’t even think they missed it. The wives all lived in the same high rise building with their children. I was young and had to tag along with my sister sometimes. I remember if they didn’t have something at one place, we’d go to another one and get some. Shit like milk, sugar, rice. The wives usually all hung out at the first wife’s place and they drank about 3 gallons of Hennessey a day between them.

IreallEwannasay

17. That’s Sir to You

I stayed the night at my friends house once and his dad woke the whole family up (including me) and made everybody line up in the living room and stand at attention while he ranted for 30 minutes about viet nam and would ask yes or no rhetorical questions and demand the individual sound off military style. Everybody just acted like it was a minor eccentricity you just had to put up with. The guy also demanded everybody in the house refer to him as sir and salute him when he walked by.

The Viet Nam war ended 10 years before the guy was born and he was not ever in the military.

Vict0r117

18. Don’t Sit in the Raccoon’s Spot

They had two couches and two recliners but the kids and their friends weren’t allowed to sit on them. We’d get yelled at for sitting on them. They had bed pillows stacked under the coffee table that we had to use to sit on. I thought it was some weird thing about keeping the furniture new, but the dad would get crumbs and such all over the couch from “his spot.” And the animals (including the raccoon they had) were allowed on the furniture.

the-gay-human

19. Free-Spirited Family

The home is a no clothes zone

More details: So I’ll try and remember some details of what happened but my childhood memory is very fuzzy/spotty because I was very highly over medicated for adhd as a kid (the prescribing Dr got jail time later but that another story) I think my age was somewhere between 7-9. From what I can remember I wasn’t made aware of what the house was gonna be like when i was invited over. He just seemed like any normal kid. But turns out they were some sort of “free-spirited” family. There was a room near the front door where all the clothes were kept and where they changed. I sat in lounge room while my new “friend(?)” was getting ready for his “home” life. I don’t think I freaked out too much but I definitely made every effort to leave without making things uncomfortable.

BloodshedJoker

20. Over the Top Strict

One of my old best friends came from a really strange overly catholic family, she was forced to finish her meals, she wasn’t allowed in the kitchen even if she wanted water, wasn’t allowed in the living room, they had a pool so if I went to swim with them we weren’t allowed to shower together cause it was a sin (according to them cause we were both girls so it would inevitably turn us into lesbians even though we were just kids, smh), when I was 14-15 I went to her house and I was wearing a tiny bit of make up, a few days later she told me her mom had forbidden her from talking to me again cause wearing make up meant that I was a bad influence on her, even though she had a brother who was a drug addict at the time and another brother with whom she had done sexual (I’m still not sure if he sexually abused her or if it was consensual, either way it was disturbing) stuff

Edit: since people are confused, the shower and make up thing happened at different ages, when we were told to stop showering together we were around 7-8 years old.

lucinasardothien

21. Jacket Thieves

When I was a kid, I want to say like 5 years old, when I walked into a new “friend’s” house their family immediately remarked how much they liked my jacket and where they can find it. Flash forward 2 hours later after playing and my jacket has vanished from the closet. I searched the closet, then searched everywhere we had played, but they told me “we’ll give it back to you when we find it.” I never went back to see that “friend” and the jacket never found its way back to me at school.

I’m approaching my 40s and to this day that shit bothers me.

FactOfMatter

22. Secret Scientists

You know that really ratty family with the trashed house and the messy scraggly kids that there seem to at least be one of on every street? That was my family, it was also the family who lived across the road from us. We were all best friends and me and my sisters would go over there all the time.

Once I was over there and opened a door, their mother yelled at me and said “get out of there! It’s poison!”. I couldn’t comprehend what I was looking at because I was a child but later on it clicked. It had to have been some kind of low-grade meth lab. If not meth it must have been some kind of illicit drug lab. It looked just like something from the earlier seasons in Breaking Bad. I’m willing to believe it was something else but what else could it have been? All the chemistry vials and shit, I doubt that anyone in that family was a secret scientist.

Andyrootoo

23. Mannequin Army

In high school I slept over at a new friends house and she lived with her father (who was divorced) and her other siblings. The home was mid century style with large windows and in every room in the house, except the kids rooms, there were life size mannequins dressed in wigs and lingerie. Mannequins standing up, mannequins laying on the couch, mannequins in the kitchen. All in different, sensual poses. All could be seen from the outside windows lol

I never went there again.

alien101010

24. Wall Art and Adult Movies

The kids mother kept the youngest kids umbilical cord taped on the wall with scotch tape. My friend made it a point to show me. We also couldn’t come out after 8 pm because the adults were watching an adult movie. Could have been an actual X rated movie… could have been an R rated movie. We were told we couldn’t Leave the room for any reason, if we needed the bathroom We had to ask. I’ll never know, My mom freaked the f out after telling her about my night, remember I was 9 . Mind you my mom cared about my well being. We “hung out” with the parents at the park a few times before this and he was welcome at my house anytime.my Mom just felt weird about how we got locked in a certain area. As a dad I get it and see her side 100%.

brapo68

25. Living All Together

My friends mom and her boyfriend lived in the master bedroom, their dad lived in the guest room. It was like that their whole childhood.

xdylanxfrommyspace